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  1. I could not help giving a proper treatment to the wise words of experienced Mr. lordsmurf by creating an aptly named thread.

    Mr. lordsmurf claims, "DV is old tech. Not just old, but damned old, to the point of being almost worthless. It was a step back even from VHS in many ways, as it made compromises in quality (blocks, chroma starved)." Dismissing the comment that indie filmmakers accepted DV for feature movies and documentaries alike, he claims that they were "bamboozled by new tech". Commenting a comparison of Digital Betacam, Digital-S, DVCAM, DVCPRO, Betacam SP, Hi 8 and 3/4-inch U-Matic, Mr. lordsmurf brushes it off, "DV Magazine was more like a giant ad for NAB, not as useful as something like Broadcast Engineering or VideoMaker. Most of my DV issues went directly in the trash after a quick browse".

    It is not clear to me why the association of broadcasters would promote a format that grew up from consumer-grade into indie and news, instead of keeping the flame of Betacam or 1-inch or whatever else the broadcast industry used in the late 1990s. It is also not clear, what was wrong in such a promotion if it were indeed true.

    Expounding his immense knowledge on the topic, Mr. lordsmurf doubles down with this golden nugget:

    Originally Posted by lordsmurf
    In hindsight, it really wasn't all that great, and lots of stuff had to be redone. I know this very well, as that was part of what I did at studios, when it came to digitizing legacy content. ... DV has blocks, and crushes chroma. It's 1990s tech, and trades flaws with DVD. And in the 2020s, DVD is a format that people all seem to hate now, too. Why does DV get a pass? MPEG with more bitrate was vastly superior to DV, and replaced DV by the 2000s. HDV failed, and DV went away.
    Indeed, DV is build around DCT blocks, and early DV implementations did occasionally show blocky structure, but these issues were quickly fixed in the early years of DV. Indeed, DV chroma is not good enough... for keying. Actually, newer editing software can key DV footage with acceptable quality, but it is true that 4:2:2 formats fared better. VHS did not have chroma problem, because no one in their right mind tried to key VHS.

    DVD is now being hated by "people"? I don't know... I guess people started hating it after they have replaced their VHS VCRs with DVD players, and they needed something else to hate. Unlike VHS tapes, DVDs are still being manufactured and sold. Moreover, some releases are done on DVD only, no BD. Other time, the first season would be released on BD and DVD, but all the consecutive would be on DVD only? Why? I suppose because it is compatible with broader choice of equipment, cheaper to produce, and offers adequate quality.

    HDV failed? Too bad that Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, PBS and other broadcasters did not know about it. Discovery HD Theater and BBC HD did not consider HDV as HD format, but they had the same opinion on 16-mm film as well. In the heyday of HD, only 15% of a program could be shot on such non-HD formats. But the times have changed. BBC now accepts 16-mm film, and in the U.S. the quality of broadcast HD has reached its lowest point. so HDV looks even better now than it looked fifteen years ago.

    Mr. lordsmurf is eager to extend a helping hand to those who want to convert their analog video recordings to digital. Because these analog recordings are so fragile and inexact in their geometry and timing, he offers equipment "from a reliable source", dissuading newbies from "randomly buying crap off eBay".

    If people used "damned old, worthless" DV (or HDV) for their home videos, all he could do is sell them a $15 Firewire card.
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  2. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    I don't think this deserves a thread but DV is indeed ancient and so DVD. As a shooting format I don't think it's a step back from VHS but as a capturing format for VHS it is indeed a step back from VHS, Because it will degrade the original quality of VHS vs if it was captured by a lossless workflow. I would never compare DV to DigiBeta or Digital S, These are professional formats with little to no compression, big difference.

    This topic would have made sense 20 years ago, not now.
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